It doesn't always pay to be fit: success landscapes

Publication Year
2021

Type

Journal Article
Abstract
Landscapes play an important role in many areas of biology, in which biological lives are deeply entangled. Here we discuss a form of landscape in evolutionary biology which takes into account (1) initial growth rates, (2) mutation rates, (3) resource consumption by organisms, and (4) cyclic changes in the resources with time. The long-term equilibrium number of surviving organisms as a function of these four parameters forms what we call a success landscape, a landscape we would claim is qualitatively different from fitness landscapes which commonly do not include mutations or resource consumption/changes in mapping genomes to the final number of survivors. Although our analysis is purely theoretical, we believe the results have possibly strong connections to how we might treat diseases such as cancer in the future with a deeper understanding of the interplay between resource degradation, mutation, and uncontrolled cell growth.
Journal
J Biol Phys
Volume
47
Pages
387-400
ISBN
1573-06890092-0606

MEDLINE PMID: 34709534 (Journal; Article)